NUTRIBUDGET - Optimisation of nutrient budget in agriculture.

In line with the Zero Pollution action plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy, Nutribudget will develop the prototype of a first-of-its-kind integrated nutrient management platform, called Nutriplatform, in various regions across Europe.

The Nutriplatform will operate as a decision-support tool (DST) for farmers, advisors and regional authorities and before the end of the project this prototype (as a stand-alone or integrated in the existing EC promoted FaST tool for nutrient management) will be tested and used by at least 40.000 farmers across Europe.

Firstly, the development of the Nutriplatform will be based on the algorithms of two advanced newly developed holistic Nutrimodels that quantify the impact of agronomic mitigation measures to optimize nutrient budget and flow across scales (from farm to Europe), across elements (C) and nutrients (N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Cu and Zn) and by looking at various agronomic and environmental targets.

The measures will be derived from (I) existing knowledge, including input from relevant EU projects (e.g. the 4 on nutrient recycling from the call) and (II) new data from field experiments with innovative mitigation measures and combinations thereof that connect animal and crop production via agro-processing industries in 5 pilot regions (4 nutrient hotspot and 1 nutrient deficient area) in 4 different climate regions in Europe.

Secondly, these measures will be linked to relevant monitoring indicators, called NutriKPIs, for agronomic performance in different farming systems, nutrient emissions and impact on biodiversity.

All will be done in co-creation, according to a Nutri-actor approach, with a consortium of 17 partners from 10 countries that are all experts in their respective fields.

Thereby, Nutribudget will contribute to systemically optimize nutrient management across different agricultural production systems and regions in the EU to reduce pollution due to the excessive use of nutrients and nutrient losses to the environment.